time, he feels the severe effects of pinching cold and griping hunger.
At this melancholy season, reflection finds a passage to his heart, and
he now revolves in his mind the folly and sinfulness of his past
life;--considers within himself how idly he has wasted the substance he
is at present in the utmost need of;--looks back with shame on the
iniquity of his actions, and forward with horror on the rueful scene of
misery that awaits him; until his brain, torn with excruciating thought,
loses at once its power of thinking, and falls a sacrifice to merciless
despair.

Mr. Ireland remarks, on the plate before us:--"Our improvident
spendthrift is now lodged in that dreary receptacle of human
misery,--a prison. His countenance exhibits a picture of despair;
the forlorn state of his mind is displayed in every limb, and his
exhausted finances, by the turnkey's demand of prison fees, not
being answered, and the boy refusing to leave a tankard of porter,
unless he is paid for it.

"We see by the enraged countenance of his wife, that she is
violently reproaching him for having deceived and ruined her. To
crown this catalogue of human tortures, the poor girl whom he
deserted, is come with her child--perhaps to comfort him,--to
alleviate his sorrows, to soothe his sufferings:--but the agonising
view is too much for her agitated frame; shocked at the prospect of
that misery which she cannot remove, every object swims before her
eyes,--a film covers the sight,--the blood forsakes her cheeks--her
lips assume a pallid hue,--and she sinks to the floor of the prison
in temporary death. What a heart-rending prospect for him by whom
this is occasioned!

"The wretched, squalid inmate, who is assisting the fainting female,
bears every mark of being naturalised to the place; out of his
pocket hangs a scroll, on which is inscribed, 'A scheme to pay the
National Debt, by J. L. now a prisoner in the Fleet.' So attentive
was this poor gentleman to the debts of the nation, that he totally
forgot his own. The cries of the child, and the good-natured
attentions of the women, heighten the interest, and realise the
scene. Over the group are a large pair of wings, with which some
emulator of _Dedalus_ intended to escape from his confinement; but
finding them inadequate to the execution of his project, has placed
them upon the tester